“Legendary Beauty” and “Rugby and Eton”–A Foursome of Sonnets
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Legendary Beauty
“Incredibly, inordinately, devastatingly, immortally, calamitously, hearteningly, adorably beautiful.”
“the handsomest young man in England” ~ W. B. Yeats on the appearance of Rupert Brooke
What makes up legendary beauty in
A man, enough to make the “normal” guy
Be smacked by it and make him want to sin
With it? When Yeats remarked on how the eye
Saw gorgeousness, he said that Brooke was at
The top of English masculinity
In fetchingness. Young Yeats was no slouch hat
Himself; no, in the same vicinity
Of sexiness as Rupert. Sedgwick called
Ellery Sedgwick
Out to his wife, “I have seen Shelley plain!”
“Man’s beauty is much more rare”: so enthralled
The editor was he could not refrain
From shouting up the stairs to tell his spouse
Inside their Rupertless marital house.
Rugby and Eton
Why Shelley? Percy wasn’t stunning as
That poet Sedgwick had been dazzled by.
Bysshe simply didn’t have the razzmatazz
Of killing gorgeousness that struck the eye
Of Sedgwick. Shelley had a sweetheart mouth
And wavy hair but nothing like the face
Of Brooke. Though delicate and not uncouth,
The head of Shelley wasn’t like the ace
In royal flushes. Edward Williams might
Edward Elleker Williams
Have disagreed. These two were meant to love
Each other after they had died. The rite
To burn their bodies lifted them above
Mere death. Both men were married but they aimed
To be entombed as one, always inflamed.
“The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.”~ Rupert Brooke
So is it any wonder that young James,
The brother of bent Lytton Strachey, should
Be stunned by Rupert and be caught in flames
Of unrequited lust for his boyhood
Fixation once his Brooke had blossomed like
A mythic Grecian flower with armpit hair,
So sexy that he could have been a spike
That Dracula drove through him like despair?
This stake was almost six feet tall, myth sweeps
Of hair of goldy, auburn, brown, mixed through,
Had deep-set eyes designed to torture, heaps
Of manliness to manage James’ heart’s coup,
Not mentioning that shapely manly mouth
And other strengths as James’ eyes travelled south.
“There’s little comfort in the wise.”~ Rupert Brooke
It seems that everyone who met Brooke felt
Compelled to cite his hunkiness once he
Had left his school. The women’s guts would melt
And men would suffer Cupid’s harsh decree,
But Brooke was captured hard inside his cage,
Lust’s kinkiness for Lascelles. James would write
To all about his torture, in a rage
Of whinge, as pitiful as it was trite,
But Lytton didn’t pity him as much
As sneer at his distraction. Lytton thought
That he at least would not desire to touch
The poet, never wanting to be caught
Up in the frenzy—only to be “snubbed.”
Brooke wriggled, picky, about whom he rubbed.
~ Phillip Whidden